By Jenny Shepherd, Aug 30 2019 11:11PM

999 Call for the NHS supports the campaign with WeOwnIt & Keep Our NHS Public to really get our NHS ‘off the table’ in any trade talks with Trump.

A trade deal with Donald Trump is a danger to our NHS. The only way to get the NHS off the table is for Parliament to urgently create legislation - along the lines of the NHS Reinstatement Bill - that entirely removes privatisation and competition, closes the door on US healthcare giants and protects our regulatory standards.

What YOU can do

- make sure Johnson feels the big oomph! to legislate NOW to take the NHS off the table in Trump trade talks.

Visit the WeOwnIt site ( address at the end of this blog below) where they've made it easy to make your voice heard. Start by inserting your postcode and the rest is simple.

Successive governments have starved the NHS of funding

all the better to create pressure to sell off 70 years worth of unique patient data to global companies.

A recent EY (Ernst & Young) consultancy paper trumpets the NHS’s “significant data assets” that cover the entire UK population from birth to death. Current data held by the NHS today amounts to 55 million GP patient records and an estimated 23 million patient-episodic care records that are held by hospital trusts and include details on admissions and medical interventions in accident and emergency departments.

The EY money grabbers, anxious to feed their corporate clients, reckon that the value to a commercial organisation of the curated NHS dataset could be as much as £5bn per annum.

They attempt to sweeten the nasty taste of stealing patients’ confidential medical data to sell to profiteering companies with the suggestion that, sold off to commercial organisations, this could:

“deliver around £4.6bn of benefit to patients per annum, in potential operational savings for the NHS, enhanced patient outcomes and generation of wider economic benefits to the UK.”

This is cobblers. The NHS is capable of delivering benefit to patients on the basis of data in our patient records. There’s NO NEED to sell it off to commercial companies. And it’s probably not even lawful to do so.

EY’s recent paper confirms what we've known about the consultancy company’s intentions for some time. For at least the last 7 years EY's been advising its corporate clients about ‘capturing value from the human body as data platform’.

to prevent the hijack of the NHS by life sciences, big pharma and digital technology companies

We are calling for an update to the NHS Reinstatement Bill

We think it's common sense. The landscape of the NHS has been altered so radically and

in the face of NHS England's proposed legislative changes for Accountable Care Organisations (now rebranded as Integrated Care Providers), we are loudly advocating for an updated NHS Reinstatement Bill that puts medical innovation including DIGITAL & AI into public hands – in order to protect the NHS from the real agenda of Accountable Care: what Ernst and Young calls "capturing value from the human body as data platform.

You could call this the "Facebook model" of healthcare where an apparently free service is monetised by capturing users’ data. In pursuit of this goal, the NHS is being broken up and massively redisorganised into a testbed for life sciences and digital technology corporations’ “disruptive innovations” (their positive spin).

Post-Brexit, the government’s aim is to export these disruptive innovations to China, India, Saudi Arabia, Africa, leaving NHS patients stranded high and dry with a rump service, while the huge wealth of 70 years of millions of patients’ confidential medical data is mined for the profit of life sciences and digitech companies.

His job will be to strengthen DeepMind’s partnerships in the NHS and overseas with the aim of applying AI to clinical practice.

Accountable/Integrated Care business and clinical models – whatever rebranded names they may go by – serve the interests of life sciences and digital technology companies, not of NHS frontline staff, patients and public.

And so does May’s speech about the promised £20bn extra NHS funding by 2023.

To prevent the hijack of the NHS by life sciences, big pharma and digital technology companies, we suggest that an updated NHS Reinstatement Bill must bring the development of drugs and life science/medical technologies into public ownership through the establishment of a National Health Innovation Authority, and at a regional level, should replace Academic Health Science Networks with regional Health Innovation Boards.

This would restore evidence-based, clinically effective practices and cut costs by ending profiteering. It would redesign medical innovation as “Health Innovation as a public good”, driven by public health needs and social justice. This must be transparent and accountable to the public; deliver products and interventions that improve health outcomes, and that are accessible and affordable to all; and it must contribute to the progressive realization of the right to health.

There should be clear guarantees about data protection for patients’ confidential medical data and a refusal to put this on the market for purchase by private companies. This huge unparalleled source of health data must remain in public ownership for the public benefit.

"The future of the NHS is more uncertain than ever as we face the threat of a No Deal Brexit and rushed through trade deals with the US. In [this] context, the risk that the commercial exploitation of NHS data is 'on the table' for negotiation, is chilling.”

By Jenny Shepherd, Mar 7 2019 06:09PM

999 Call for the NHS is urging everyone to write to their MP to support NHS EDM #2013 which is an Early Day Motion called a “Prayer” Motion. It’s the only type of motion that can annul and stop secondary legislation.

This is urgent because the Department of Health has “quietly” introduced secondary legislation, in the form of a Statutory Instrument, to make major changes to NHS regulations that will damage the way in which GP/Primary Care and Commissioning works - and of course it will not benefit patients or staff.

We are asking MPs to use parliamentary procedure to call this legislation into question and annul the Statutory Instrument

Please visit our Prayer Motion page to find a LETTER TO MY MP template and more information. This is urgent we have until March 24th to get this annulled. It can be done.

Secondary legislation? What the Duck is all that about then?

In the light of raised eyebrows and lots of questions since we launched the Prayer Motion campaign - this blog post explains what secondary legislation is, when it was created and how it has been used and abused since it was introduced in the Statutory Instruments Act 1946.

The Parliament UK website says that:

Secondary legislation is law created by ministers (or other bodies) under powers given to them by an Act of Parliament - the Statutory Instruments Act 1946. It is used to fill in the details of Acts (primary legislation). These details provide practical measures that enable the law to be enforced and operate in daily life.

Most secondary legislation is created, 'made and laid' as a Statutory Instrument.

Statutory Instruments (SI) were intended as a device to allow Ministers to make minor updates and amend existing Bills without bothering the House of Commons (or indeed any part of parliament) - allowing ministers to deal with localised and/or minor issues and changes to law without time-wasting debates in the Commons.

That’s the theory. The practice seems to be a bit different.

THE BIG CONCERN

The theory sounds like common sense, sort of... Until you notice the sharp upward trend in the use of Statutory Instruments through the Thatcher Years, into New Labour and the last ten years of this thing we call ‘Austerity’ government.

The red lines in the table below show a huge disparity between the number of actual ACTS (Primary Legislation passed in the Commons & Lords) and the number of Statutory Instruments.

By and large, because of the way they are made (the Negative Procedure), Statutory Instruments are only seen by ministerial committees. This means there is NO opposition oversight of or input into these legislative changes. In the case of this Statutory Instrument - it is not even required to have even nominal scrutiny by the cross-party-house Joint Committee of Statutory Instruments (Select Committee).

What’s the point of having Parliamentary opposition if it can’t oppose? To use the Mainstream Media’s classic line “where's the balance?” One party state, anyone?

Latest figures on the number of SI’s passing through unseen? The House of Commons Background Paper on Statutory Instruments (2016) says:

In the region of 3,500 SIs are made each year. Many SIs are not subject to any parliamentary procedure, and simply become law on the date stated. Whether they are subject to parliamentary procedure, and if so which one, is determined by the parent Act.

On top of this,look at the size of these Statutory Instruments. Given the number of pages, can they really contain only minor amendments and non-vital pieces of policy making?

According to Bracknell: “Statutory Instruments vary enormously in their scope from substantial pieces of legislation to considerable numbers of orders temporarily restricting traffic on particular local roads.”

So we have to ask - are Statutory Instruments now a way of changing Acts and regulations without Parliamentary debate and proper scrutiny?

If so much paperwork filled with items, appendices and addendums is passing through the corridors of parliament unseen by most MPs and Lords, is it any wonder that we are crying out “Democracy? What Democracy?”

This concern applies with a vengeance to Statutory Instrument 2019 No.248 The Amendments Relating to the Provision of Integrated Care Regulations 2019. It contains pages and pages of guff.

It's a good job there is an Explanatory Memorandum to SI 2019#248 - be warned it’s uncomfortable reading but at least it’s in an English most MPs and members of the public can understand - if they were given the chance to read it of course.

If you haven't already please help make this happen. Don't be confused by Parliamentary Procedure.

We know it's going to take political legislation to bring back the NHS into public hands but we remain independent of all the parties in order to lobby and pressure all the parties. We are about people and the NHS they should be able to keep.